


And My Heart Shall Beat For Yours, Nevermore

by ladybugdays



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alcohol as a disinfectant, Blood and Injury, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, F/F, F/M, Kinda, Multi, Past Relationship(s), Raven is a bitch and I love her so much, Resentment, Yeah this has Edgar Allen Poe references, also there's like a fleeting mention of IronQrow do not @ me I just think theyre neat, because I am not a coward, no beta reader we die like men, past polyamory, sorry if this is OOC I wrote it after finishing season 4 lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:07:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23878924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladybugdays/pseuds/ladybugdays
Summary: He found his voice, but not before the hardest exhale of his life. “You know,” he said. “I always preferred you over Qrow because you talked less.”Raven was leaning against the window frame with a snap, mouth twisting into a sharp, downward line. The sour look on her face helped mask the grimace she made when she tried to stand up fully, but her hand twitching over her stomach gave her away. “Qrow has better luck than me, then.”
Relationships: Raven Branwen/Summer Rose/Taiyang Xiao Long
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	And My Heart Shall Beat For Yours, Nevermore

**Author's Note:**

> I could have finished this after I get around to watching the rest of RWBY but, no. I'm a leo.

Tai was not unfamiliar with an empty house. After Summer’s time with him ended, he could never seem to find a room small enough, especially when Ruby cried. She had always had a set of lungs on her to fit paragraphs in. As a sleepless toddler, her wailing would echo down the halls as if to compensate for the two women missing from her life.

He never minded. People came and went from Patch, in need of someone to mend a roof or fix a car or get a kitten down from a tree. A huntsman had many talents, useful between the hunts he limited himself to.

(There had to be a limit. Yang and Ruby couldn’t lose three out of three parents.)

After Yang left, the first true night alone came soberingly, but not perilously. Tai opened all of the windows in the house and set a kettle on the stove. Whiskey was tempting, but he promised to save his last good bottle for when he finished Ms. Shizue’s roof. Zwei lifted his head from his spot under Yang’s chair as the smell of sandalwood incense began to circle the room. 

"What?” Tai asked him.“Summer won’t mind me airing everything out. I’ve only ever touched what she never used.” 

For a moment, the wind chimes clinked and the burning, earthy smell swirled around the air. The holo-vision was chattering on in the background. Yang was supposed to finish the first season of their favorite show- _Semblanceness-_ with him, but with her spreading her wings, he could clear through the recordings himself. 

Tai could also hear the wind mousing the leaves of the trees outside, and the flap of wings as a lone starling went to bed late. Twilight turned the kitchen to a safe, bright orange. The holo-vision continued on about nothing.

Summer used to burn incense before major events. Missions, dates, parties. While she dotted her i’s and crossed her t’s, she would pace around, catching smoke in her clothes. Summer had never worn perfume, only the scent of metal on her hands and incense in her hair. Tai only burned it when there was no one to talk to about it. 

Tai breathed it in, grinning down at Zwei. “I didn’t want to tell Yang how badly she stunk up the place for the first few weeks. She was too mopey to get out of bed some mornings. And I thought Qrow used to smell when he was her age!”

Zwei lifted his head, the beady marbles of his eyes sweet and curious. Then, the lights blinked and flickered. Zwei’s ears perked up. Directly above them, where Yang’s room sat, the ceiling creaked. Tai made no sound as he moved the boiling kettle to the counter to cool, and no sound as he slipped up the stairs.

He kicked in the door without pause, fists up. “I’m warning you, I-”

Tai froze. A large black bird was settled on the windowsill, her head cocked like all she thought when she saw him was _“stupid.”_ She sat in the shadow left by the curtains, with the moonlight barely touching her slick, inky feathers. 

Tai could not move a muscle in his body. His bones had surely turned to iron, or he’d twisted the wrong nerve, and paralyzed himself like the step-father from _Semblanceness._ The raven only stared.

He found his voice, but not before the hardest exhale of his life. “You know,” he said. “I always preferred you over Qrow because you talked less.”

Raven was leaning against the window frame with a _snap,_ mouth twisting into a sharp, downward line. The sour look on her face helped mask the grimace she made when she tried to stand up fully, but her hand twitching over her stomach gave her away. “Qrow has better luck than me, then.”

“Yang was here this morning,” he said, nothing else coming to mind. “You just missed her. The bed’s still warm.”

“I know. I waited until she left. Quite annoying, you know. I have less blood as a bird.” Raven attempted to lift herself up again, but only succeeded in grunting. She examined one of her hands. Ink stained her palm. Moonlight was cold, and blackened blood to match her hair. “Qrow told me she’d lost her arm, but I thought she would have been back on the road by the time she’d opened her eyes again.”

It did not hurt that she’d been speaking to Qrow. It did not anger him. He’d given up on the anger he tried to hold towards her after Ruby was born, and all he wanted to do was have his other wife hold her for the first time. Only weariness colored his tone. “Do you want to bleed to death, or do you want me to get the first-aid kit?”

Raven clicked her tongue, but her head tilted back in her own way of resentful agreement. She was angry at him for daring to leave the windows open. “I’ll take my time, thanks.”

She nearly knocked over Yang’s bookshelf when she attempted to walk, but he caught her, and slung her arm over his shoulders. He could feel blood seeping into his own clothes, where she deigned to brush against his torso. Even after the better part of two decades, she still smelled like metal polish and cranberries. Argan oil and blood, too. Mostly blood. 

“The Branwens never abducted a good doctor then?” he asked.

Raven scoffed. “They’re usually too squeamish for our way of life.”

“If infection kills you, it’s your own fault for being stupid.” He paused, remembering that Raven and Qrow were both too alike and far too different.“And were you being stupid?”

“Grimm looked at me the wrong way, believe it or not. Had to teach it a lesson. You don't look at a Branwen funny.” Raven didn’t smile. She grimaced. Fully in-tact, it would have been a signal of her amusement. 

Tai helped her stagger into the bathroom. She slid down, fully-clothed, into the tub, and took on a bored look. “You didn’t even redo your shitty bathroom?”

“Our daughters like it as is, believe it or not.” He left to retrieve the first-aid, the kettle, and a bucket. He poured a cup of green tea and poured the rest into the bucket. When he returned, Raven was sinking into the empty tub and staring limply at the ceiling. He flicked on the light, making her groan again. A perfect match to a hungover Qrow. "You look like shit," Tai said. He set the materials down on the toilet. "Where's the worst of it?"

"Left underarm," Raven grunted. She did look like shit. Her hair was slicked back with mud, and filled with twigs and leaves. Perfect for a bird's nest. He remembered their second year at Beacon, when she tried to slick her hair down with gel after spending hours ironing it out. It never bought her attempt at being someone other than herself. 

He had, when she'd promised to marry him. 

Her sharp cheeks were contoured by a smear of blood- probably from her hands. She had a long, hard face, built for cruel expressions. Her heavy eyelids carried her sneers a long way. One of them was swollen over, and her lower lip was torn open. 

That wasn't the worst of it, it was just what he was stupid enough to search. She was the reason ravens were collectively called an unkindness. Regardless, there was a wreckage hidden beneath her shreds of armor. 

Tai passed her the tea and produced a set of sharp scissors. The blotch of red over her ribs had ill promise. "Won't bother making you lift up your arms. Sit still, I'm going to cut you out of your rags."

"You must really miss seeing me naked."

"We shared a dorm room. All it'll do was make me miss when you weren't wrinkly and sagging, sweetheart."

"If you're dying your hair to keep away the grey, I hope the curtains match the drapes."

"Oh, so you're the one who misses seeing _me_ naked?" 

Raven sipped her tea as he cut open the leather padding around her chest. It parted open with a sigh. She winced when he began to peel cloth from her skin. The tea spilled over her fingers. 

Old dressings clung to her wounds, a mess of brown blood and stinking gauze. He wouldn't have enough to disinfect it, especially if there were other major wounds. He peeled it away all the same. The skin beneath was an angry pink. It matched the color of the wounds on her legs when she was stripped out of her boots and pants. 

"You must be desperately looking for something if you weren't going to risk your life with your own stubbornness," he observed. "You still owe me my alimony payments. Did they not teach you about civil court in that bandit tribe of yours?"

Raven rolled her eyes. "Just tax evasion." 

Tai dropped the bandages in the sink and poured the lukewarm water from the bucket over her wounds, hesitant to irritate them with soap. Her tea cooled on the toilet. Raven noticed the bottle of vodka sitting beside it. He was out of proper disinfectant. He only had the little wipes Yang wiped on her stump of an arm in the morning out of paranoid habit. 

Raven took the bottle and downed a long swig. There were no words while he washed out her wounds. She didn't scream, even though her skin burned like fire beneath his fingers. Dirty alcohol swirled down the drain, soap chasing minutes after. Raven laughed instead. She laughed like it was a joke he would never understand. Qrow laughed like he was desperate for someone to get it. 

“Something funny?”

“You.” Raven chuckled and licked her lips. “Trying to act like you don’t resent me.”

“It’s called being an adult. You should try it sometime.” Tai raised his eyebrows at her, but his face was blank. Sandalwood wafted through the doorway. "Summer never gave up on you, you know." Tai passed Raven a towel to pat herself down with. "She always left the doors unlocked, in case you ever came home. She’d sit with Yang by the windows, singing one of those terrible, edgy songs you and Qrow used to like before you decided you didn’t like being Raven before being a Branwen."

Raven looked at him like she wanted to loathe him. Her clenched jaw could have snapped steel. She would have smelled the incense by now, too. “I was always a Branwen. I was stupid enough to forget it for a while, but I was always a Branwen.” Her ruby eyes were piercing as she searched his face."Glad you got a few more years to play house out of her, though, huh?"

"She was your wife, too. No matter how much you try to forget us." He handed her a roll of gauze. If she wanted to be stubborn, she could do that herself. "I think your problem is that you can't forget. Not really. That's why you waited. You wanted to see our daughter before you let yourself lose track of her again."

"I've never lost track of her!" Raven snapped, fumbling as she tried to wrap the bandages around her middle. They refused to stay tight. "Don't act like your daughter never had a parent. She and Summer's kid have _you_ and my bleeding heart of a twin. My brother's heart melts for anyone who smiles at him."

"And yours is as cold as stone, I take it?" Raven was better off not knowing that Qrow had been shaken by the attack on Beacon. Enough that it pushed him and General Ironwood to get hitched in a small ceremony. Then again, Raven also saw every doorway as the entrance to a cage, even when she had the key to it. 

There was a time when Raven rebelled by stealing. She was in it for the thrill. Other students would find their earrings or lipgloss missing, spoons would disappear after dinner, and finally, daggers and bullets. She hoarded it beneath her mattress, like a real raven. 

Tai had caught her in the act of stealing one of Summer’s tins of incense. There was an argument about what would happen if she got kicked out of Beacon. Raven had been too frustrated to see reason, even then. 

_(“Do you know what they do when they catch thieves?” Tai asked her while she glared at him. He took her hand and kissed her fingers. “They kiss their ugly fingers, and their scarred arms.” His mouth followed his words._

_Raven squirmed, but looked more confused than anything. Like she was failing to be angry about it._

_“And they kiss their sharp jaws.” He kisses the juncture of her head and neck. “And the ears they don’t use. And their papery cheeks. And their ruby eyes. And their frowning mouths._

_“You’re an idiot,” she’d said, breathless despite her best efforts._

_“What does that make you?”)_

Raven finally dropped the gauze. "Did you think you could win me home? That you'd charm my pants off and I'd learn to bake and let your kids go soft? Burning shitty incense won’t turn back time." 

Raven had never liked the sandalwood, Tai thought in passing. She’d preferred the rosy scents, or some mulchy musk. "No. I dont think youd do your own family any good." Tai took the gauze back from her, nudging her arms above her head so that he could wrap clean bandages. "I think our daughters are better off without you."

That one was meant to hurt. Tai wasn’t proud of it.

Raven's breath flared, rising in her chest like bellows. "I never promised I was nice. I never promised I could play domestic forever. STRQ breaking up was bound to happen. Relationships aren't always forever. "

"No, but having kids is usually different, Ven."

That made her flinch. _Ven._ Only Tai called her that. _Ray_ had been what Summer called her. They would always be missing that first half. A part of the love between them. 

But Raven had chosen to leave first. 

Tai rose to his feet. "You can have Ruby's bed for the night. I usually get up at dawn. I'll sleep in. I expect you to be gone by the time I'm awake."

"I hate you," she spat, quoth The Raven. 

"Because you love me?" 

"Because I trusted you to take care of me.” That, she was angry about. “I'm more the fool than you, Taiyang."

He kissed her forehead. “Goodnight, Branwen.” 

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Raven: Im a cutthroat bandit love is fake  
> Tai: okay so you dont love Yang  
> Raven: what the fuck did you just say if I weren't bleeding to death right now Id kill you
> 
> Tai and Yang have one of my favorite loving asshole dynamics in the show, and I figured he would have been like that with Raven, but, I mean, leaving your spouses and kid kinda changes how someone interacts with you I guess? I was writing this thinking Tai being "soft" (I say, hesitantly) with Raven is partially to get under her skin and partially because he doesn't hate her. He likes her as she is. A huge asshole who probably owes him alimony payments. Take her to civil court, dude.
> 
> Please give me your Hot Takes in the comments. Im @ladybugdays on Tumblr.


End file.
